Entries in coach t
(52)

This morning Danielle Worden had her State Championship powerlifting meet in Ionia (where exactly that is, I have no idea.) She competed in the 123-lb. weight class, which is two classes under her 145-lb. weight class from last year. Both her and Coach T were hoping for a top-10 finish. She didn't quite get that.

As it turns out, there are now a few people from the Champions Club who know where Ionia is.

At the crack of dawn, Mrs. Bennis, Mr. Bennis, Mrs. Tara, Shakes, Sam, Josh, and Mallory met up at the gym and made the two hour trek to the meet to see Danielle compete for the last time in her high school career. I am continually humbled by the community we have here, and this is just another example of that. Thank you guys for taking the time on a Daylight Savings Sunday to make the Champions Club better!

Coach T comes through again and brings the Champions Club two great kids; Hunter and Zack Stein.

Hunter is a freshman at Mott and is in one of Coach T's Lifetime Fitness classes. He's a hockey player and showed really good technique in class, so Coach T got on the recruiting trail and worked to get him on board. Once I talked to the parents, I came to find out that Hunter has a twin brother, Zack, who goes to International Academy and also plays hockey. So bonus for us, they're both on board!

Hunter is definitely ahead of his brother in terms of technique because he has Coach T for 5 hours every week. In fact, if it was just him, he'd probably be the closest person I've ever seen to skipping Fundamentals - especially since T is teaching unweighting and Pose running in his class now. But Zack is no slouch and is picking up rather quickly. His work capacity might even be a tad bit better than Hunter. Both are serious about playing hockey in college and beyond, so hopefully we can help them along their way.

They finished Day 2 earlier tonight. We'll check back in when they're done.

Two very difficult movement patterns cameup on Monday and it gave us the opportunity to nitpick on each. We've let burpee technique slide a bit since the Summer in favor of intensity, so we made these "strict burpees" with our best inperpretation of a push-up, and also kept feet together and vertical shins on the landing. On the snatches I really wanted to exaggerate loading order. You'll notice us sitting back after the landing if it was caught in a bad position. Our 6:30 session featured Coach Casey, Sam, Evan, Angie, Barry, Jay, and Jesse. Out of sheer boredom from lack of Josh Bennis in the house, Mallory jumped in as well. We also had a surprise appearance from 2016 rookie Matt Hickey in the middle of the video!

Good work crew!

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And now a public service announcement from Coach T.

Good morning,

The Christmas season is approaching and I wanted to give an opportunity for those who want to help others and give back through community service. Below is a link to my Church's 2018 Warming Center for the homeless. We do this every year around Christmas. Basically, we provide shelter, warm clothing, food and a place to sleep overnight for the homeless. It takes a lot of selfless service and team work to have a successful night. There are two opportunities to sign up. One is for families to help with dinner service, registration and give away room/blanket distribution. The other is for adult men to provide security during check in and to keep the peace from 7:30-11:00 PM. If you are interested in helping, please click on one of the links below to see the days and times listed and to sign up.

Over 4 years ago, Coach T got me to come in and co-coach his 3rd hour lifetime fitness class. This was the beginning of our collaboration that grew to involve 3 schools, two gyms, and a B1G presentation.

Looking back on the video, I notice a few things we still coach, but most of it is kind of outdated; that is not to say it was wrong, but it has been refined time and time again. Still, it's cool to see the grassroots. Check it out.

Coach T has been doing a great job this Summer so far adjusting to the high intensity, all-inclusive way we approach CrossFit. But his specialty remains coaching the basic lifts; back squat, bench press, and deadlift. Last week he got a chance to coach 8th grade rookie Sam Butcher on her first ever sets of back squats. Here's how it looked.

Control of the spine is one of the most critical things to develop for anyone, let alone a teenager playing sports. Going slow and holding static positions is one of the best ways to help that. Keep that in mind moving forward for whenever we have max effort days this Summer.

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On a down note, bad news came out of the Utica Ford community on Saturday. Head football coach Todd Koehn passed away this weekend unexpectedly and a GoFundMe page has been started to help cover the funeral costs. I met Coach Koehn a few times at Ford while preparing for the MSU clinic and helping out with powerlifting. In a world of football coaches throwing out terms like "get BIG" without thinking and downplaying anything related to CrossFit, Coach Koehn seemed to be nothing supportive of not only Coach T, but an oursider like myself. I always felt welcome at Ford and Coach Koehn went a long way to make that possible. He's definitely someone I would have liked to play for in high school.

Often times when people are presented with too many decisions, they either walk away or have second-thoughts. This usually comes from a desire to make everyone happy. You are not happy with everything (unless your name is Mrs. Pip) so how can you expect to make something that is supposed to make everyone else happy?

For example, Coach T just presented me with the idea of running a powerlifting club for the kids at the gym. We have not reached a final decision on it yet, but there's a chance it might happen in the fall. Mama V has also asked me about hosting Yoga classes. Morrow/JZ have asked me about doing Olympic lifting. Binno has asked about having a special gymnastics-focus class. Murley has asked about doing an Endurance class. Just last week a potential new kid asked me if I have a special 2-day-per-week option for the Summer. Mr. WA has asked about having a 10-session punch-card.

Now imagine if I presented all those options to Evan Pugh (New Kid who I'll be doing a post about soon) when he came in last week. Even if he still signed up, there would have been a lot of "well, I wonder if I should've picked the 2-day per week instead of the punch-card, and maybe the extra Yoga classes" going on in his head.

Limiting options usually eliminates people who want Yoga classes, or want specialty lifting, or want to change their computer clock design every day of the week. And that's okay. Keeping the options simple lets you (or me) focus on doing one or two things really well, and naturally attracts people who think the same way.